Avoiding Writer's Burnout

1.  Write 2k Everyday--No matter what yesterday's wordcount was

     Maybe 2k is too much for you, maybe your wordcount is more like 1k a day, or maybe you even do more than 2k in the average day.  Whatever the case, you set your goal, and that's your goal.  So hit it.  And if you miss it?

     Oh well!

     Don't try to "make up" for your previous days (unless you know you have the stamina or you're on a tight schedule of course).  Just try to hit today's wordcount, and worry about yesterday's wordcount after you're finished.

     It can be overwhelming, especially if you skip a day--or worse, several!  Sometimes you just need to take care of the now before you take care of the past.


2.  Take care of yourself

     Drink lots of water, eat healthy foods, get exercise, take asprin when you need it, take your meds if you have/need them, take naps, get lots of sleep.  Your brain, believe it or not, is a part of your body, and if your body isn't heathy, neither is your mind.  The better you feel in body, the better able to concentrate on your story you'll be.

     And if you let your health decay and get yourself sick, you'll lose valuable writing time, as well as getting behind in your other daily duties.  You should also ...


3.  Hang out with friends

     Take breaks.  Hang out with people.  Socialize.  You'll feel better afterward, I promise.  Well, unless you have anxiety.  Then it's a fifty-fifty.  Still, you should try it!  Find writer friends if you can so you can BS about how hard writing is and nobody understands and find commiseration in your conversations.

     Human contact goes a long way toward keeping you happy and healthy; if nothing else, it will give you more material to work with.


4.  Unfollow toxic people on twitter

     I try not to unfollow people if I don't have to--it's like distancing yourself from a friend, and I've always had trouble extricating myself from toxic people and environments.  Unfortunately, I use Twitter as a source of inspiration from time to time--or at least a distraction.  Whatever you want to call it.

     And when I go on Twitter to take a quick break, post about my writing progress, encourage others, etc., I sometimes get caught up in the political bullshit going on in the world, and the asshole things other people are saying, and I get so upset sometimes I can no longer write--all I can do is bury myself in pillows and blankets and listen to loud music to keep from screaming.

     The more toxic the poster, the less able I am to return to my work.  So a few weeks ago I made the decision to unfollow some people who were making my Twitter feed downright unappetizing to attend to, and I haven't regretted it since.  I still get distracted, of course, but not the sick, "I'm-going-to-kill-someone" distracted.  Not as frequently, anyway.

     And whether or not you use social media for inspiration or distraction or discussion or none of the above, if you find that certain parties are always posting content or making comments that upset you, unfollow them.  Just do it, get them off your dash; you are in no way obligated to keep following anyone, and life's too short to be handing all that power over to the assholes.  You'll be much happier, and much more productive, with that negativity cut out of your life.

5.  Listen to music, read books, get excited

     Take time to do things that relax you.  Listen to music while you write, or take walks, or just close your eyes and let it sink in.  Read a good book just because you can and you know you want to, get excited about someone else's world and characters, draw fanart, write fanfiction, draw art of your own story, write fanfiction for your own work because it amuses you.  Call these "writing hours" or "research hours" if you have to.

     The big secret to not burning yourself out, is simply to not burn yourself out.  Rest.  Take a nap.  Set it aside and come back to it.  And if you're more frustrated than you are excited?  Maybe it's time you took a step back, maybe worked on another project.

     As a writer, it's important to push yourself and investigate uncomfortable truths, but if you push yourself too hard too fast, you'll catch fire, and might lose your taste for the work.  You'll certainly find yourself needing a break, and it's better to take the small breaks as needed than to end up needing breaks that last for months.

     Take care of yourself, writers, and the writing will take care of itself.

(Okay not really, you still have to actually do the writing part)

(But it did sound like a cool closing statement, amirite?)

The Allen Lee Affair: A Question of Justice

Maggie C

1/5/15

The Allen Lee Affair:  A Question of Justice

“For more than forty years, the United States courts have recognized that students do not check their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse door.”

—Judge Michael Davis (Tim Cushing, 1)

Allen Lee, a straight-A student (NEWS SERVICES, 1) in Cary, Illinois, was arrested near his home on April 24th, 2007 (Long and Starks, 1) and charged with two counts of disorderly conduct.  The possible repercussions might be as high as thirty days of incarceration per charge and, together, fines of up to $3000.  As a result, the young athlete (Wendy, 1) was suspended indefinitely from school and notified by his recruiter that his marine enlistment was being nullified due to the misdemeanor charges.  What did Allen Lee do wrong?   

He turned in his homework.   

Shortly before the arrest was made, Allen Lee was asked by his creative writing teacher, Ms. Capron (Keeshan, 1), to turn in a free-writing assignment in which, according to Lawyer Thomas Loizzo, he was to “‘Be creative; there will be no judgment and no censorship.’” (Associated Press, 1)  However, in the wake of a college shooting in West Virginia, Allen’s work was determined to be not only inappropriate for school but, evidently, inappropriate for society.  

After turning in his assignment Ms. Capron took the paper to the principal and school psychologist who determined that Allen, in writing about drugs, shootings, alcohol, profanity, and necrophilia, was not just a trouble-maker but a criminal. (NEWS SERVICES, 1)

It makes sense, with the Virginia Tech Massacre only a week behind, that the school would be on high alert for any signs of mental or emotional disturbance in their students; under that kind of duress, responding with fear, anger, and worry is all perfectly natural and understandable.  What is not understandable is the arrest of a student for doing what he was told.

Many Americans don’t ponder their rights too deeply—growing up without making waves or causing a fuss, they feel safe and secure in the knowledge that, for their purposes, America’s protections are absolute.  Without paying attention to the world around them, they fail to understand just how brittle the system is and how much trouble every small infraction can cause.   

Historically speaking, it’s clear to see that the law favors a restriction of human rights while students are on campus, and in the eyes of many that seems relatively fair.  Still, the subject can leave a child—or even an adult!—feeling a touch ambivalent.  When you’re dealing with the futures of young adults, not just the shaping of their minds but, potentially, their ability to procure and keep a job, how much restriction is too much?

Because Allen Lee is a citizen of the United States of America, I posit that his incarceration was unjust, unconstitutional, and that the school was completely out of line in involving the police.  As citizens of the United States of America, children are entitled to protection under the first amendment of the bill of rights, which states that:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”  (Congress, 1)

This amendment asserts that we as citizens of the United States are entitled to speak and write essentially whatever we please to.  To quote the adage, it’s a free country, and within the bounds of this country, Mr. Allen Lee wrote freely.

Allen insisted that he was encouraged to express himself freely, without censorship or stopping to think about what he was writing, which is, according to the Allyn and Bacon Guide to Reading, exactly how a free write is to be conducted (Ramage, Bean, and Johnson, 32–33).  The entire point is free association, allowing the mind to ramble so that you can figure out the directions you need to take in order to complete an assignment.  If she gave the class a free write assignment without a goal she shouldn’t be surprised at the results, since a teenaged free write without direction is bound to run a course straight through the teenage mind.

Even if Allen’s essay was without any academic merit and miles outside of the curriculum’s atmosphere, the matter should never have exceeded school level.  Allen did nothing but write whatever came to mind, which is, to be quite frank, the opposite of a crime.  Even the school’s claim of disorderly conduct can hardly be counted as more than a sham; while Allen Lee admitted to wanting to “rile” Ms. Capron (Keeshan, 1), his attempts don’t even count as an attempt to incite a riot, since to incite a riot one must actually desire a riot to occur and be joined by at least two more individuals (Matson, 1), and the charge, very specifically:

Shall not be deemed to mean the mere oral or written (1) advocacy of ideas or (2) expression of belief, not involving advocacy of any act or acts of violence or assertion of the rightness of, or the right to commit, any such act or acts (“Incite,” 1).

To all appearances, Allen’s essay included no advocacy of violence—according to his explanation of his essay, most of it is made up of song quotes, nonsense, and ramblings about his future military life and his dislike of his teacher (Poulsen, 1), none of which happens to be a crime.   

Being an honors student, Allen should have known better than to attempt to get a rise out of his teacher, but the police had no place in pressing charges for a juvenile attempt at a prank.  If the school actually cared about Allen Lee’s mental or emotional well-being, or even the safety of the rest of their students, they would have first asked Allen to explain his essay or speak with the school psychologist, not forced him out the door with his future crumbling in his hands.   

To have someone—anyone—arrested for what they’ve written creatively is an absolute travesty, going against the very founding principles of our nation.  If an adult were subject to the same treatment, the courts would find it completely impermissible; the police might not even bothering answering the call, and if they did then the case clearly would have been thrown out immediately as a violation of the first amendment.  

Schools, meant to assist students in their personal and public growth as human beings and future productive members of society, are put into a unique position of power that allows them to quite literally control the fates of their students—with a properly placed phone call or a misplaced email, a child’s dreams can be brilliantly and brutally pulverized.  Mr. Allen Lee stared down the barrel of that gun and watched the legal system quiver with their finger on the trigger, his military dreams in shambles until at last Ms. Capron and Mr. Thomas Lazzio came to an agreement and all charges were dropped, allowing Allen the chance to re-enlist for service in the marines.  (Keeshan, 1)

Ultimately, for Allen, things turned out okay—but they had the very real potential to not turn out okay.  Because someone else had committed a crime nearly seven hundred miles away a week before, Allen was treated like a rioteer for the sake of completing an assignment unsatisfactorily, all in the name of “safety”—not his safety or the safety of the other students either, since he who gives up freedom for safety is neither safe nor free, and allowing such a violent reaction to such an ambiguous paper would set a precedent of incarceration for any student who wrote something that a teacher felt was “inappropriate.”  

There are those who might believe that Allen’s punishment was just, supporting the decisions of the administrators due to such passages as, “So I had this dream last night where I went into a building, pulled out two P90s and started shooting everyone…, then had sex with the dead bodies” and “Blood sex and Booze. Drugs Drugs Drugs are fun. Stab, Stab, Stab,​ S…t…a…b…, poke” (Poulsen, 1) and the proximity of this event to the shooting at Virginia Tech, in which a young man took 32 lives and then his own (Associated Press, 1).  It is the fundamental belief of these individuals that safety comes before freedom, especially in the case of children in a school setting, and to some extent they’re correct.   

According to the 1985 case of New Jersey v. T.L.O., students can expect to experience reduced privacy and freedoms inside school grounds, but according to Tinker v. Des Moines, unless students cause a disturbance large enough to distract the class they continue to be protected by the first amendment.  A creative essay featuring violence, turned directly into the teacher without stirring up the student body, therefore violates no laws, and should not have exceeded the school’s reach if and when punishment became a concern.  If in fact, in Indiana, it is a law that “disturbing writing” is counted as disorderly conduct (Landmark, 1), Indiana is breaking the federal law, and this case could have easily gone through to the Supreme Court if pressed; as said by Judge Rosemary Pooler, “The protection of free speech cannot depend on a listener’s veto; if a listener or reader misinterprets a comment, that is not the speaker or the writer’s fault.”  (Hilden, 3)

Additionally, all individuals in America are to be assumed innocent until proven guilty, and the addition of a second charge in relation to the temporal proximity of the VT and CG cases (Associated Press, 1) assumes that, first of all, Allen was inspired by the VT killer, and second, that Allen was somehow involved in the VT killer’s case.  

Allen may have been inspired by the killer—when school shootings happen, they tend to worm their way into everyone’s minds, planting seeds in their subconscious—but he made no indication that he would be following in the boy’s footsteps, and threatened no one.  The one remark he made that could be really worrisome was “No quarrel on your qualifications as a writer, but as a teacher, don’t be surprised on inspiring the first cg shooting,” (Poulsen, 1) but it was not, in and of itself, a threat, and thus was not illegal.   

There was also no evidence to support any claim that Allen could have been an accomplice to the killer, which is exactly what he’s being accused of when the killer’s actions are being used to heap more punishment upon Allen.  The actions of others are irrelevant when trying or arresting an individual—if a young woman smoked marijuana while her neighbor was being murdered and the police found out, she would be arrested for drug possession, not murder; if one purposeful car accident occurred a week after another, no one would assume that the second driver was “inspired” by the first.  How then does it make sense for Allen to be doubly charged for a single offense?  

“But he should have known better than to write that,” someone might say, “he deserves to be punished,” and I see where they may be coming from.  I concede that his actions were inconsistent with the moral code demanded of him by the school, the report being laced with profanity and such, and while I do hold that Ms. Capron’s insistence that the students were not to censor themselves should have exonerated him of the charges (you should not, after all, demand an absence of censure if you do not want an absence of censure), the school was well within its power to give him detention or ISS or any of the million-and-one such punishments they have in their repertoire.   

If the school was really concerned about Allen Lee’s mental health, they should have called his parents, had a talk with him, and possibly sent him to the school psychologist.  There are so many more paths they could have taken before asking law enforcement to step in.  If he posed a real threat to society, would he have passed his psychological entrance exams for the marines?  Would they not have been able to decide that he was too spitfire to be ranked among them before he was accepted?  

Some believe that all mentions of violence in writing point to a twisted and dangerous mind, but it may have been his inability to continue to express himself which could have caused him to snap.  My mother is a Master’s-level Psychologist working as a Behavioral Intervention Specialist for Pathways.  She’s worked in her field for more than a quarter of a century and she often has her clients keep private journals just so that they can get rid of the ideas bouncing around their heads; “You have to get it out,” Mary B. Coates once said, “and if you can’t talk about it, the only way is to write, draw, or act upon the impulse.”   

I myself have never seriously hurt another human being, yet I write about violence almost constantly.  Violence of all kinds, from a timid fistfight between brothers to bloody murders over trust funds, all the way to the horrors of necro, pedo, and all those other philias, are a part of everyday life.  Not a pleasant part, no, but a part nonetheless, and writing is about life, the truth both good and bad, ugly and euphoric.  To write about these things makes no one “evil” or “twisted” or “wrong.”  If it did, Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, and Nabokov might have some explaining to do.

It seems to me that the biggest issue here is Allen’s vehemence toward his English teacher, which he expresses openly.  No, it’s not a nice thing to do, but what teacher alive never attempted to make one of their professors uncomfortable at some time or another?  Even the most respectful students I know have attempted to get a rise out of their teacher at some point or another. As valedictorian of my class, I once spent twenty minutes trying to convince my Trigonometry teacher that English was better than Mathematics, simply because I was better at English and I took pleasure in trying to gain the upper hand.   

Granted I liked that teacher, and I didn’t intend to hurt his feelings in any way, shape, or form, but if a student cannot express their dislike for a teacher, how are we to know if the teacher is doing wrong?  Does a student just stand by when a teacher bullies one of their fellows because they don’t want to get in trouble?  Should they be less passive-aggressive in their approach and confront the teacher directly?  Can there possibly be a right answer?   

It all comes down to this; the fact of the matter is that when Cary-Grove High had Allen Lee arrested, they broke the law.  In a single blow, without first trying to discover what was actually meant by Allen’s essay, they could have destroyed his entire future—sixty days in jail might have cost him his chance to graduate with his class, his marine enlistment, funding for college, the whole nine yards.   

One of the definitions of violence is “injury by or as if by distortion, infringement, or profanation” (“Violence,” 1), and in their neglect of US law and internal policy, the Cary-Grove school district injured Allen Lee and his future both by distortion and infringement.   

Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez once said that “The systematic disregard for children’s basic constitutional rights by agencies with a duty to protect and serve these children betrays the public trust.”  (Mohr, 1)  I have a teacher who likes to say that if you don’t understand something, half the class is likely sitting there hoping you’ll ask the question they’re too afraid to, and it’s important to draw the connection.  The betrayal of the public is also a betrayal of the individual, and we cannot forget that the infringement of one child’s rights is indicative of hundreds, maybe thousands more, who either don’t know that they’re being infringed upon, or have been silenced by faculty, family, or officers of the law that don’t themselves understand the kind of harm they’re doing.   

Therefore the violence enacted against Allen Lee was violence enacted against mankind itself, for where one freedom flies, the rest fall with.  It was not Cary-Grove’s place to call for the  arrest of honors’ student Allen Lee; it was instead their place to protect him, and had they not pulled the charges, I’m certain that the courts would have agreed.   

Works Cited

Associated Press. "Marines Drop Student Charged for Violent Essay." Msnbc.com. NBC News, 28 Apr.

2007. Web. 20 Dec. 2014.

Congress. "Bill of Rights and Later Amendments." Ushistory.org. Independence Hall Association,

1995. Web. 20 Dec. 2014.

Cushing, Tim. "Demanding A Student's Facebook Password A Violation Of First Amendment Rights,

Judge Says." Techdirt. N.p., 14 Sept. 2012. Web. 20 Dec. 2014.

Hilden, Julie. "Was It a First Amendment Violation for a New York School to Suspend a Fifth Grader

Who Shared a Violent but Perhaps Joking Wish?" Verdict. Justia, 03 Apr. 2012. Web. 20 Dec.

2014.

"Incite a Riot Law & Legal Definition." Incite a Riot Law & Legal Definition. US Legal, n.d. Web. 20

Dec. 2014.

Keeshan, Charles. "Update on Cary-Grove High School Student Who Was Expelled (IL)..." The High

Road. The Daily Herald, 23 May 2007. Web. 20 Dec. 2014.

"Landmark Supreme Court Cases About Teens." USCOURTSGOV RSS. United States Courts, n.d.

Web. 20 Dec. 2014.

Long, Jeff, and Carolyn Starks. "Illinois Police Arrest Teen after Teacher "disturbed" by Essay." Nation

& World. The Seattle Times, 26 Apr. 2007. Web. 20 Dec. 2014.

Matson, Dave. "Disorderly Conduct Charges." Disorderly Conduct Laws. Dave Matson, n.d. Web. 20

Dec. 2014.

Mohr, Holbrook. "Meridian Schools Violated Student Rights In Mississippi, Arrested Students Without

Probable Cause, Feds Say." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 11 Aug. 2012. Web.

20 Dec. 2014.

NEWS SERVICES. "Student Arrested for Essay Content." Chicago Tribune. Chicago Tribune, 26 Apr.

2007. Web. 20 Dec. 2014.

Poulsen, Kevin. "The Creative Writing Essay That Got Allen Lee Arrested | WIRED." Wired.com.

Conde Nast Digital, 30 Apr. 2007. Web. 20 Dec. 2014.

Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. "Chapter 2: Thinking Rhetorically About Your

Subject Matter." The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing. 5th ed. New York: Pearson Longman,

2009. 32-33. Print.

"Violence." Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 20 Dec. 2014.

Wendy. "Wendy's Blog." : Reactions to the Virginia Tech Massacre. Blogspot, 30 Apr. 2007. Web. 20

Dec. 2014.

Children Will Listen

Today's blog post comes with theme music!  

     On Friday, my mother got home from work as my brother and I were about to take a walk to the Dandy, so we invited her along.  We had a nice walk as a family, and when we got back my brother asked if we could go down to the mall so he could buy some hats he'd planned on picking up before some of his friends canceled on him.

     We were having a good time, so we hopped in the car and drove the 45 minutes or so down to the mall, where we almost never go.  As long as we were out, we decided to have dinner, so when John had picked out his Suicide Squad and Dipper Pines hats, we headed up to Friendly's on the second level, to feast on ice cream and get actual food to take home.

     As I have discussed before, I have Tourette's Syndrome, which is a neurological condition in which a dopaminurgic disregulation results in vocal and mechanical tics.  Essentially, I make weird involuntary noises and twitch a lot.  Sometimes I swear, sometimes I scream, sometimes I trill like a bird, and I never know what's coming next or when a new tic will present itself.

     As mentioned in previous posts, one of the things that sets off my tics is changes in temperature, and in NY state we've had a long string of very, very hot weeks, so everyone keeps their air conditioning cranked up to eleven, which means a pretty severe change in temp whenever I enter a public building.  I'm also cold blooded (actual Reptilian Maggie Coates for Overlord 2k16), so the cold gets to me fairly quickly.

     This is all to say that by the end of our dining experience, during which I consumed an ice cream sundae for bonus cold points, I was feeling pretty ticky.

      I wasn't really paying much attention to anyone else in the restaurant until I turned my head to shout "Goddamn" at the cushion of my seat, at which point I heard the mother of two at the table behind me say, "Well she's going to Hell."

     At this point I'd like to remind you that this is not a nice thing to say about anyone, regardless of your personal religious views, especially when you are well within earshot of the person to whom you are referring.

      The children laughed, because of course they would, Mommy made a funny, and when Mommy makes a funny, we laugh.  The little boy then proceeded to make coo-coo bird noises at me as I twitched and jerked about, and if I had looked behind me I probably would have caught him with a finger looping aerial circles around his ear.  His mother laughed and let him continue with this for about a minute before she told him he should probably be quieter.

     No shit, Mom.

     At no point did I turn to speak to her, though I wanted to.  After strike two I decided if they said anything further, I'd say something, but we left shortly thereafter.

     As soon as we left, I wished I had said something.  I always feel that way after I decide to "just ignore it."  It makes me feel as though I've betrayed my people--as though I've let down the entire human race, even. Certainly I've deprived those children of an early opportunity to learn from their mother's mistakes.

     "But Maggie, you're overreacting!  She couldn't have known you had Tourette's!"  Okay, yeah, maybe not.  But should that have mattered?  For one, when I do my herky-jerky tics, which I was doing then, I look a lot like I'm having a seizure or a stroke.  If you were having a seizure or a stroke, and you heard people making fun of you instead of maybe, I don't know, wondering if you were okay or maybe needed medical assistance, you wouldn't be super pleased, now would you?

     "But you weren't having a stroke or a seizure!"  Okay, true.  But it's still demeaning and dehumanizing, other-izing at the very least.  It's embarrassing enough to have people stare at you whenever you go out in public, to have to calm down the wait staff whenever you scream for no reason, or worry that that police officer is going to think you're flashing gang signs or flipping them off on purpose or is going to arrest you for public indecency (you can still, I'll remind you, be arrested or fined for public cursing in this country).  Having people openly mocking you, children, openly mocking you, is demoralizing at its best.

     And what if my actions weren't the result of a neurological disorder?  If I really was suffering from a nervous breakdown (which I have done before and will do again, or my surname isn't Coates), or delusions, or I had the DT's or some other form of withdrawal?  If I was having a psychotic episode, would that make me any less deserving of basic human empathy?  Would that make it any more right to mock me for something I couldn't control?

      There's no honor in mocking the disabled.

      Let me say it louder for the people in the back:  There is no honor in mocking the disabled.

     There's certainly no honor in (essentially) telling someone they're going to hell because they swore involuntarily.  I've been through that before, lady, my classmates in high school called me Satan for years, and every other week someone openly wonders if I'm possessed.  Brushing it off is second nature at this point.  Brushing a lot of things off is second nature at this point.

     And yet....

     I can't really let this one go until I get it off my chest, this you-didn't-say-anything guilt that I get.  Because it's me today, and I can take it--next week is someone just slightly less stable than I am, someone more vulnerable, someone younger, someone more afraid, someone less able to defend themselves, someone who hates themselves more, someone--anyone!  Because cruelty, especially cruelty to a stranger, doesn't stop with one person.  Cruelty to a stranger never stops with one person.

     And probably what bugs me most about this particular case was that this was a mother, teaching her two young children through example and tacit approval that it's perfectly acceptable to make fun of disabled people within their range of hearing.  Teaching her children, through example and tacit approval, that people with disabilities, people who behave a little oddly, people who dare to act a little different than the norm, do not deserve respect and exist to be ridiculed.

     And that--that right there--is what kills me.  That's what makes me so angry, so frustrated with myself for not speaking up.  It's one thing for a judgmental asshole to be wandering the world, making fun of young women (teenagers) for things they can't control.  But to teach your children that that is an acceptable lifestyle is unconscionable!  If it had been a child poking fun, and the parent had reprimanded them, I'd let it go--I'd know that the kid was in competent hands, and the parents were doing their best to do right by their kid.

     But it's not fair to me, or others like me, when a parent teaches their children to mock.  It's not fair to the children, that they're being taught by their parents to mock.  It's not fair to those children's children, either--and somewhere along that family line, there's going to be a child who ends up "off."  Tourette's has a typical onset of ages 7-12, so in the next six years, both those kids could wake up one day with tics!  They probably won't, and I wouldn't wish it on them (life is hard enough already, and with that kind of mother they don't need this kind of hot mess on their plates), but everyone who thinks they're normal eventually finds out they're wrong.  Unless they're deluding themselves.

     Here's the facts:  Children listen to what you say, watch what you do, and learn from what you teach, whether you intend them to or not.  If you're cruel to other people, your children will become cruel; if you're kind to other people, your children will become kind.

     But children also pay attention to what you don't say, to what you don't do, to what your face does when they do something.  They seek your approval and try to please you.  And if your son finds out that making fun of "crazies" makes you laugh, he'll do it again.  And again.  And again and again and again.  Because it makes Mommy happy, so it's the right thing to do.   Children follow in the footsteps of their parents and teachers, and a lot of the time, bullying begins with the adults.  With that we-are-both-sane-so-we-are-inherently-better laugh, or a smile that says "God that kid was so annoying, I have to reprimand you for hitting her but Jesus Christ did I want to do it myself, good job."

     Children want to make their parents happy.

      So be the person your Mom would want you to be.  Or, if your mother was an ass, be better than she was.  Encourage your children to be better than you are--why would we have children if we didn't want a better world for them than the world we grew up in ourselves?

     And if you're going to make fun of disabled people, don't do it in front of your kids.  They'll listen.

     Then they'll repeat.

4 More Basic Formatting Tips

     I spoke before about some formatting pet peeves of mine.  These aren't pet peeves so much as they are just tips that are important that I see a lot of people (especially newbies) overlooking.  It's eleven o'clock at night after a very full day, irritating stuff is on my twitter, my classmates, God love them, don't understand standardized writing structures, and I have a headache, so prepare for callous, good-natured aggression.  Enjoy.

1.  Indentations

     When you start a new paragraph, indent that bitch.
   
     Yeah, yeah, common sense, right?  Only it's not.  I see a lot of people overlooking this crucial step, or doing it wrong--my mother once told me that an indentation is five spaces on the space bar.  It's not; a proper indentation is one slap on the TAB button.

     But if you're on a website *coughcoughBlogspotcoughcough* that doesn't allow for tabing, five spaces will work fine.  In fact, online, indentation may not be necessary at all!  But it can help set each paragraph apart from the last.  However, if you're working on any MS you plan to submit to anyone, slap the tab button.  It'll save you a lot of reformatting later on.


2.  Apostrophes

     Apostrophes are used to denote possession (Mindy's cat) and missing characters ('ey kid!/you can't do this to me), and that's about it.  Often they're used to make a number or a shortening plural (ABC's/That 70's Show), which is a peeve of mine that I try not to let in the house--it's technically correct, at least in the sense that it's been used that way for decades if not centuries, and as a descriptivist it's my duty to bend with the tide of linguistic change.  Still, I try to show that such things are plural just by make the letters big and the "S" small (80s. ABCs).  I'll never change the world's mind, though, so if you do it the other way just keep doing what you're doing.

     Anyway, other than in these rare cases, an apostrophe is never, never to be used on a plural.

     If you're ever wondering whether an apostrophe fits or not, ask yourself if the sentence can be restructured to exclude the "S".  For example, "This house's the best!" can be restructured to, "This house is the best!" so the apostrophe fits.  "The house's door," can be restructured to "The door belonging to the house," so it fits.  But "The houses stood in a row" can't be restructured in any simple way that eliminates the "s" without eliminating the plural.  You'd have to change it to something silly, like, "The house and its compatriots stood in a row."  (and then you haven't eliminated the S, you've just moved it to the word "compatriots," though if there were only two you COULD say "the house and its compatriot stood in a row," but a row is usually more than two and now I'm just overthinking it oops)

     And speaking of "its," a pronoun--she, he, it, they--is the one exception to the "possession=apostrophe" rule.  The only time that a pronoun has an apostrophe is when it's part of a compound word--see the previous example, "it's," which can be broken into "it" and "is."

4.  Double space your shit

     Double-spacing is important, okay.  If you don't select "double" on your line spacing (or 1.5 at the BAREST minimum), it's going to be too cramped, your understanding of how long your work actually is will be thrown off, and your editor won't be happy.
   
     If you want to write it all in single-space and double-space after the fact, that's fine!  That's your prerogative!  But double-spacing needs to be done before you send it off for work--double-spacing helps you avoid massive text walls, makes people less likely to just skim your work, and allows anyone trying to edit or analyze the piece to make notes and corrections between lines, which is super important.

     Just ... double space, okay?  It's the standard submission convention, and single-spacing makes it difficult for others to take your work seriously, because it's one of the first things they teach (or should teach) in a high school English class.

5.  Twelve point TNR font

     Again, if you're looking to submit your work, you need to adhere to standard convention, and standard convention is twelve point Times New Roman font.  Create it in any font you want, but know that before you submit, 99% of the places you things off to are going to ask for 12pt TNR.

     Of course, some companies might prefer Arial or Verdana, or Courier New, or something else that's a little off-the-wall, so make sure you check the preferences of every agent/publishing company you submit to BEFORE you submit, and make any necessary revisions to format.

4 Basic (Novel/Short Story Writing) Formatting Tips

     I don't have a lot of time to just sit down and read anymore--it's one of the things I really really miss about being a kid.  I devoured It in maybe a week as a ten-year-old, and when I was twelve I once read eight 200 page books within twenty-four hours.  Watching that huge stack of library books lower book by book was so satisfying, and the books themselves were wonderful.

     My point there kids is, read while you're young.  Do as much as you can, because the older you get the tougher it's going to be to find that time and cultivate those skills.

     Anyway, now that I'm an Adult™ I have trouble finding time to read--so most of my reading on a day-to-day basis consists of plays I have to read for class or, most voluminous, fanfiction.  Some fanfiction is really really good.  Other fanfictions are really, really bad.  

     The vast majority are okay.  But there are a lot of good fanfictions that get a total pass from me just because of the formatting--the ideas are solid, the writing is fine, maybe it's not the best work in the world but I'd read a couple thousand words if the formatting just weren't so nonstandardized.

     And I get it--schools don't teach you things like this anymore.  No teacher ever told me to do any of these things--with the exception of indentations when starting new paragraphs, I had to teach myself how to write and format by extensive reading on my own.

         So in the interest of helping writers, new and old, fanfiction or original content, here are some of my formatting pet peeves.


1.  One Paragraph, Many Speakers

     Make sure that when a new character starts speaking, you switch paragraphs.  Even if this means having several one-sentence paragraphs, do it.  It'll make the work more streamlined and less cluttered, it increases the white-space-to-text ratio, and it very clearly indicates that someone new is speaking, meaning you can use fewer dialogue tags, and your audience doesn't have to put in too much brainpower.

     Your audience sometimes needs to be able to work things out on their own, it's in the contract, but when it comes to formatting, don't make them work any harder than they absolutely have to.

2.  "  " or '  ' Used For Thoughts

     This gets me.  This gets me really hard.  I'm sitting there, reading a fic or short story online, doo doo da loo, la la la, and I see the character starts speaking, and I get into character speech mode.  "Dorothy Anne should be shot," she thought.

     And I always have to double-take--thought?  Thought?  What?  Quotation marks indicate speech, not thought, that's why they're quotation marks, because we're using them to quote a person's speech.

     Almost as bad are the using of 'apostrophes' to indicate thought, which just irks me on a level I don't completely understand.  It's a thing, okay, we've all got them, and this thing is that these tactics confuse the reader--even if it's just momentary, that's still a moment that the reader is taken out of the story, that they have to double-back and approach from a different angle, and the goal of a writer is to minimalize those moments as close to completely as possible.

     To avoid this confusion, there are two ways to indicate thought that aren't intrusive--you can just state it;         She thought this was a really bad idea; he thought about the cat on the roof, and wondered how it got there.

     That method is quick and simple, though it creates a little more distance, and summarizes more than it shows exactly what a character is thinking.  If you're looking to quote the exact thought, I recommend the second method; italics:       Thus is ludicrous, she thought, climbing into her car.  "Hand me a Kleenex."  There's no way Jonathan could have done any of this.

     This way the thought is clearly separated from typical narration, and when the character does speak aloud, the audience can tell what's being said aloud and what's being privately pondered upon.

3.  '  ' For Speech Spoken Aloud

     Again, quotation mark drama will be the death of me.  Here's a quick rundown of what kind of quotation signifier to use in different situations:

Speech:  Quotation marks.  Always quotation marks.
     Ex,  "Hey Mom," Jenny called, "Can you help me with this?"
Exceptions:  I really need to punch someone in the face, Jenny thought, and didn't realize she'd spoken aloud until every eye in the room was on her./He asked his mother for a tissue and she told him to go fuck himself.

Quotations outside of speech:  Quotation marks.
     Ex.  He took the "pencil box" and buried it deep beneath the ground.

Quotations within speech:  Double apostrophe
     Ex.  "Your 'pencil box' is really starting to unnerve me," she said, backing away slowly.

4.  Massive Blocks Of Text

     A paragraph that goes on for an entire page isn't one most people are likely to sit through--not unless you are really, superbly, extremely  skilled, but if that's the case you're unlikely to do this.  Big paragraphs in and of themselves are fine in moderation, and sometimes necessary.  But many many big paragraphs can, and should, be broken up into smaller bite-sized chunks.

     Sometimes, especially online, an author breaks up their paragraphs into perfectly manageable bits, but due to the lack of a double-space option, the paragraphs clump together to form a massive text wall nonetheless, which drives off prospective readers.  In this situation, make sure you press "enter" twice between paragraphs; this will serve in the place of the double-space option and help your readers break the text up.  Plus, it helps them avoid losing their place.

     ... I should probably stop forgetting to do this on my own blog.  Whoops.  Well, I never said I was perfect, did I?

     If you have any formatting or fanfiction pet peeves you'd like to share, feel free to drop them in the comments section below!